THE GROWTH SERIES
The Growth series are workshops aimed at more established creative professionals, freelancers, creative businesses, and arts organisations. Each workshop builds on a topic from the previous series and takes the learning one step forward towards a sustainable and successful professional life in the creative industries.
As with all our workshops, each one can be delivered as a single 2-hour unit or combined with others to create a bespoke learning program for your participants. All workshops can be delivered in person or online.
The Art of Negotiation
How do you say no? How do you negotiate your fees, and manage your professional relationships? Communication, mediation, and conflict resolution are vital parts of running any business, but many creatives have never learned the basics.
The Art of Negotiation is a friendly introduction to the basics of better communication, practised in a safe environment, with practical exercises that focus on negotiation tactics, mediation, and conflict resolution.
This workshop is ideal for:
Creative freelancers, established practitioners, arts organisations.
People Skills
Creative businesses have unique and challenging staffing needs – the requirement for talented and loyal people without the reliable turnover that can guarantee the services of an employee. We need a complicated combination of freelancers, interns, casual staff, and friends – so how should a creative business find and retain clever people? People Skills is a practical workshop that details the value of position descriptions (including tips on how to write a compelling PD), how to interview and source references, using recruitment companies, booking freelancers, being a good boss and more.
This workshop is ideal for:
Creative freelancers, established practitioners, arts organisations.
Pitchface
Pitching is a necessary part of professional creative practice, whether it’s discussing an idea for a work, talking to funding bodies about a project, or participating in a competitive pitch process or competition. It’s fraught with legal and marketing challenges, and needs to be approached in a thoughtful and strategic way. Pitchface is a relaxed workshops that provides practical advice on how to tell your best story, protect your ideas, and simple tips to avoid the ‘elevator pitch’ and build lasting relationships with people who can help bring your ideas to life.
This workshop is ideal for:
Creative freelancers, established practitioners, arts organisations.
Make Your Own Work
How often are creatives told to ‘make their own work’? And what exactly does it mean? Make Your Own Work takes a tough love approach to the job of producing a self-devised project, from the initial ideas stage through to completion. On the way we’ll examine the legal requirements, the role of a producer, challenges to watch out for, and tips to build a lasting career. It’s suitable for practitioners from every aspect of the arts, from screen to performance to visual art and more.
This workshop is ideal for:
Creative freelancers, established practitioners, arts organisations.
Creative Wellbeing
Working in the creative industries is both strenuous and rewarding. How can you maintain relative balance between flourishing and falling, particularly when your output is built with emotion? Creative Wellbeing explores ways that creative professionals can purposely bring wellbeing practice into their everyday lives. Led by a creative industries specialist and wellbeing guru, this interactive workshop is an appraisal of your wellness agenda, so you can remain creative for the long term.
This workshop is ideal for:
Creative freelancers, established practitioners, arts organisations.
Cultural Tourism
For small-to-medium cultural and creative organisations, cultural tourism can also be an effective way of generating revenue, connecting with community, and helping to define a region or place as a cultural and artistic destination.
In this practical workshop, participants will learn how to maximise the special attributes that set their organisation apart from others, including their history, traditions, arts and culture.
This workshop is ideal for:
This workshop is ideal for: small-to-medium cultural and creative organisations.
Helping Hands – Recruiting and Retaining Volunteers
Recruiting and retaining volunteers is critically important for small arts and cultural organisations, but it can also be difficult for under-resourced groups without the capacity for a recruitment strategy. Helping Hands is a bespoke workshop, tailored to the needs of your NFP, focussing on finding creative and realistic ways of recruiting and retaining volunteers while also working with the issues of limited capacity and resources.
This workshop is ideal for:
This workshop is ideal for small arts and cultural organisations and NFPs.
Creative Social Enterprise
A social enterprise is a business that sells services and products with the specific intention of tackling a social problem, improving their community, helping specific groups of people, or enhancing environmental sustainability. A social enterprise could be an existing company, a new organisation, or a dedicated sole trader – but what does it all mean? And what’s the point? This workshop looks at the basic regulations of a social enterprise, the challenges of certification, and a practical look at whether becoming a social enterprise is the right next step for you.
This workshop is ideal for:
This workshop is ideal for arts organisations, social enterprise start-ups, and purpose-led businesses.
Better Brainstorming
Creative collaboration can cause more headaches than highlights. Try something new and get your team out of the ‘butcher’s paper and post-its’ rut. Better Brainstorming is a fun and interactive workshop that outlines novel and inventive brainstorming techniques from creative leaders from around the world, and draws on artistic practices like illustration and improv to make brainstorming more effective. Make the best use of your limited resources by getting better at brainstorming!
This workshop is ideal for:
This workshop is ideal for small to medium sized arts and cultural organisations and NFPs.
Care-Based Practice
Care-Based creative and arts practices are essential to devising projects that are more meaningful, productive, and inclusive. Done well, care-based practice benefits everyone involved from the creatives to the clients, funding bodies and audiences. In this timely workshop, participants will learn more about the origins of care-based practice, its various forms, and practical ways to bring kindness into professional practice and creative business operations.
This workshop is ideal for:
This workshop is ideal for arts organisations and purpose-led businesses.
Creative Systems Thinking
There’s nothing wrong with paper and pen, but increasingly we need to use digital tools to help us with our usual professional processes. The Creative Systems Thinking workshop takes the time to discuss ways to ensure the longevity of a creative or cultural business, with the help of technology, by looking at the practical and every-day topics where digital processes can start to make a difference, including admin organisation, project management, financials, people and marketing.
This workshop is ideal for:
This workshop is ideal for small to medium sized arts and cultural organisations and NFPs.
From Little Things
Volunteer-led cultural organisations are the backbone of the arts – but how can a not-for-profit grow from a small group to a larger, more self-sustaining venture? From Little Things is an interactive workshop that first examines the limitations faced by smaller volunteer NFPs, including team retention and working with a board, before applying some practical approaches to steer growth and change. Led by a creative industries and NFP expert, this workshop can help a small organisation transform in a manageable and sustainable way toward making a bigger and longer-lasting impact.
This workshop is ideal for:
This workshop is ideal for arts organisations and purpose-led businesses.
